R1T vs Hummer EV Test Drive Experience

I‘ve had my R1T right at 9 months and have put 9,300 miles on it. Overall I’ve been very quite happy with it. My use case involves about 45% of my “fuel” coming from a 14 panel solar array at my farm. So after 9,300 miles, my ”electrical bill” on my house has increased by about $375 total for these miles. (I’ve not done any charging away from home/farm.)

Today I decided to test drive a Hummer EV since a local dealership had 4 or 5 in stock. I drove the old Gen1 Hummer (diesels) when I was in the Army Infantry and it goes without saying that the new Hummer being a EV is quite quite quite different.

Items I noticed:

• Dash had a lot of plastic parts
• The car pumps in artificial engine noise to make it sound V8 like. (I found this very weird)
• It drove “smaller” than the footprint of the vehicle, which is good in my eyes
• Certain headscratching items, like the frunk didn’t have any sort of hood lining to it. Just exposed painted hood. For $120k, I’d think there should be a lining of something.
• It had windnoise when going down the interstate. I think this is because there were two cube sized off road lights attached hear the A-pillars. I think that was the source of the wind noise.
• The power tonneau cover was darn cool
• Supports CarPlay (sorry - couldn’t resist)
• Has super cruise self driving (I didn’t get the chance to test to see how it compares to Rivian’s self-driving, which I use all the time)

One item I can’t get past is the size of the battery. Given how large the battery is, my level 2 charger at home would have to be plugged in for 14-16 hours to fully top off the battery, vs 6-8 hours to accomplish similar in my R1T. Range is slightly better in the Hummer, but like 320 vs 280 Miles. The “economics” of the increased charge time just makes it pretty impractical in my eyes.

The Hummer was “nice”, but the cost of me getting into this situation just doesn’t make economical sense. R1T is quieter, I love the gear tunnel and underseat rear storage. I realize they aren’t direct competitors with each other, but they are both EV pickups, so the comparison was a path I went down.

I now have both.

I have not noticed wind noise in the Hummer, some have had issues with the roof panel seals. I took my R1T to Sedona today and noticed some wind noise. I do not have the pod lights, so it could be that.

The fake engine noise has three settings, the quiet one is barely noticeable.

It does drive smaller than it looks.

SuperCruise is great, even better than BlueCruise on our Mach E. Driver+ is far behind both of those.

Powered tonneau is much smoother than the Rivian one, but I still have the original one. Spray in bed liner is non-slip and the multipro tailgate is great.

Hummer has way more display customization, on both displays, many things requested on this forum are already available.

Even with CarPlay supported, many Google apps can be downloaded directly to the truck, such as Waze, PlugShare, and many audio streaming apps. And it has XM built in.

Yes the Hummer and even the Silverado EV have very large batteries. The R1T IMO is the perfect combo of battery, range, and capability. When towing our travel trailer we get the equivalent of about 35 mpg. MPGe is well above 70 and even into the 80s with a DM R1T.

Rivian just has a great product! I do think a larger battery option would be good for those that tow. Something like 180 kwh.

GM got the Silverado right in this regard. 450 mi range means you should get at least 200 mi towing. But placement of the charging port is not good on Silverado EV. If you don't have a pull through charger you will need to unhitch.

The 2024 Hummers have 2 different battery sizes, 20 or 24 modules. The 320 mile range one would be the smaller battery without off road package.. That version with the bigger pack is 381 miles. I have the bigger pack with off road package and it is 359 miles. Smaller pack with off road package is 298 miles.

That 20 module pack is 175kw, which is close to what Rivian was originally proposing for the max pack years ago.

I would look at the SUV Hummer as I find the exterior aesthetically pleasing, but I would have to drive it to see if I liked it, and IDK if it would fit in my garage. The rear-wheel steering would be excellent, but I would have to see about the handling. Since we just got a sports sedan for my wife, maybe a little more contrast would be nice, or perhaps I would hate it. It's hard to say, and I'm not in the market for another car right now.

I want to keep my Rivian for one more year and look forward to 2025 for my next vehicle. I plan on cross-shopping many different things, with the Hummer SUV and the Macan EV being on the list, and who knows what else will be out by then? I'm not interested in the lightning; that's just an ICE F150 reskinned and isn't innovative enough, but Ram and Chevy will have theirs out by then, and GMC should too.

240vPlug said:

Yes the Hummer and even the Silverado EV have very large batteries. The R1T IMO is the perfect combo of battery, range, and capability. When towing our travel trailer we get the equivalent of about 35 mpg. MPGe is well above 70 and even into the 80s with a DM R1T.

Rivian just has a great product! I do think a larger battery option would be good for those that tow. Something like 180 kwh.

GM got the Silverado right in this regard. 450 mi range means you should get at least 200 mi towing. But placement of the charging port is not good on Silverado EV. If you don't have a pull through charger you will need to unhitch.

Click to expand...

I dream of the day there are many pull through chargers that'll let me add 200 miles of range in 10 minutes.

azbill said:

I now have both.

I have not noticed wind noise in the Hummer, some have had issues with the roof panel seals. I took my R1T to Sedona today and noticed some wind noise. I do not have the pod lights, so it could be that.

The fake engine noise has three settings, the quiet one is barely noticeable.

It does drive smaller than it looks.

SuperCruise is great, even better than BlueCruise on our Mach E. Driver+ is far behind both of those.

Powered tonneau is much smoother than the Rivian one, but I still have the original one. Spray in bed liner is non-slip and the multipro tailgate is great.

Hummer has way more display customization, on both displays, many things requested on this forum are already available.

Even with CarPlay supported, many Google apps can be downloaded directly to the truck, such as Waze, PlugShare, and many audio streaming apps. And it has XM built in.

Click to expand...

Great perspective and so many great points here.

re: fake engine noise - that would have been helpful for the “sales guy” to be semi-knowledgeable about.

I was also pretty turned off by the standard car dealership mentality (I don’t know why I’m always surprised) where my sales guy blatantly lied to me that the tax credit was still available. I somewhat played dumb to see how much conviction he had with this point. I just politely said, I’m pretty sure that went away for cars of this price point (as well as income limits). The other “strike” against the sales guy is that he knew almost nothing about the Hummer itself (J1772 plug) as an example. However, I tend to give these guys a pass since they aren’t high volume seller compared to the rest of their fleet; and it probably is hard to know “everything” about the various GMC trucks. That said, I just always (wrongly) think that people working at dealerships are car enthusiasts.

A spotlight on diminishing returns of a larger battery pack, even with 800V architecture. GM went about creating a halo product, along with the traditional trait of one: impracticality.

Donald Stanfield said:

I would look at the SUV Hummer as I find the exterior aesthetically pleasing, but I would have to drive it to see if I liked it, and IDK if it would fit in my garage. The rear-wheel steering would be excellent, but I would have to see about the handling. Since we just got a sports sedan for my wife, maybe a little more contrast would be nice, or perhaps I would hate it. It's hard to say, and I'm not in the market for another car right now.

I want to keep my Rivian for one more year and look forward to 2025 for my next vehicle. I plan on cross-shopping many different things, with the Hummer SUV and the Macan EV being on the list, and who knows what else will be out by then? I'm not interested in the lightning; that's just an ICE F150 reskinned and isn't innovative enough, but Ram and Chevy will have theirs out by then, and GMC should too.

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The 4 wheel steering is definitely one of the things that make it feel smaller. Easy to maneuver and park. As far as handling, the off road package eliminates the sway bar, so it probably handles better without that package. I wanted the Hummer for off roading, not so much for performance. But I do think the Hummer in Normal mode is comparable to my R1T in All Purpose. Hummer does not have a Sport mode.

KubotaTed said:

Great perspective and so many great points here.

re: fake engine noise - that would have been helpful for the “sales guy” to be semi-knowledgeable about.

I was also pretty turned off by the standard car dealership mentality (I don’t know why I’m always surprised) where my sales guy blatantly lied to me that the tax credit was still available. I somewhat played dumb to see how much conviction he had with this point. I just politely said, I’m pretty sure that went away for cars of this price point (as well as income limits). The other “strike” against the sales guy is that he knew almost nothing about the Hummer itself (J1772 plug) as an example. However, I tend to give these guys a pass since they aren’t high volume seller compared to the rest of their fleet; and it probably is hard to know “everything” about the various GMC trucks. That said, I just always (wrongly) think that people working at dealerships are car enthusiasts.

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My dealer had one person very knowledgeable about the Hummer and he went through all the setup and features with me at delivery.

KubotaTed said:

Range is slightly better in the Hummer, but like 320 vs 280 Miles.

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When I am at 90% charge, I can get over 300 miles (@70mph). It says 329, but in the end it is around 300.

azbill said:

The 2024 Hummers have 2 different battery sizes, 20 or 24 modules. The 320 mile range one would be the smaller battery without off road package.. That version with the bigger pack is 381 miles. I have the bigger pack with off road package and it is 359 miles. Smaller pack with off road package is 298 miles.

That 20 module pack is 175kw, which is close to what Rivian was originally proposing for the max pack years ago.

Click to expand...

So if you could only own one of the two which one would it be? The Rivian or the Hummer? And why please. I appreciate it as I'm looking at the Hummer not sure it's worth an additional $40K+

Inhisname said:

So if you could only own one of the two which one would it be? The Rivian or the Hummer? And why please. I appreciate it as I'm looking at the Hummer not sure it's worth an additional $40K+

Click to expand...

For me, it would be the Hummer. Some reasons, but these are personal preferences:

More suited for off roading, tires, rock sliders, under body cameras.
SuperCruise.
Removable roof.
800V charging.
Better towing range.
Better built in nav and more available apps.
Multipro tailgate.

I bought my Rivian used and it has the 21 road tires and no underbody shield, making it more of a road truck for me.

KubotaTed said:

• Certain headscratching items, like the frunk didn’t have any sort of hood lining to it. Just exposed painted hood. For $120k, I’d think there should be a lining of something.

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Lining was left out for weight savings, greater efficiency. /s

azbill said:

For me, it would be the Hummer. Some reasons, but these are personal preferences:

More suited for off roading, tires, rock sliders, under body cameras.
SuperCruise.
Removable roof.
800V charging.
Better towing range.
Better built in nav and more available apps.
Multipro tailgate.

I bought my Rivian used and it has the 21 road tires and no underbody shield, making it more of a road truck for me.

Click to expand...

That kind of puts the possibility of getting a Hummer lower on my list. The 800V charging and the roof would be nice, but I find the Rivian nav to be more than adequate, and the apps on the Rivian are fine. The more suited for off-roading means less suited for street riding as an inverse. It might be nice to have more of a contrast between my car and my wife's. I never go off the beaten path, though, so I don't really need the capability.

Too many choices.